


the myrrh tree

by toromeo (ald0us)



Category: The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: "underage" warning used for safety, Child Abuse, F/M, one-sided incestuous feelings, slightly dead dove
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 15:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11923446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ald0us/pseuds/toromeo
Summary: Jonathan asks the Seelie Queen if his father loves him, and learns the perils of obedience.





	the myrrh tree

**Author's Note:**

> I was always curious what could have driven Valentine to reject Jonathan and what Sebastian meant by "the perils of obedience" in COLS, so here's my take on it.

Jonathan Morgenstern is sixteen when the Seelie Queen first meets him. He’s tall, gangling, but has large, bright eyes, elegant cheekbones, and a pretty mouth. She’s matched her form to his—a child of his same age, no more. His manners, like his father’s, are impeccable, but there’s a curiosity in his black eyes he can’t hide.

“Jonathan,” she says, and holds out a hand. “I care to speak with you.”

Valentine Morgenstern’s face is dark with disapproval, but the Queen does not care. There is no trust or love lost between them, and though it benefits her to indulge him now, that arrangement will not last. He is a dark smudge on beauty of her Court, tiresomely moralizing, and utterly without humor. His charm is prodigious, but the Queen has lived and woven her own magic for so long she can see the strain in it, the ice behind his eyes.

Jonathan looks to his father, who relinquishes him with a nod. He steps carefully through the undergrowth, dips down and presses a nervous kiss to the Queen’s hand, then at her insistence, hesitantly takes it.

She walks with him down the chosen forest path in silence. His nervousness is not visible to the human eye, but to hers, his cool control is an illusion. It has been long since she has been in the company of something so young, and his mortality ebbs from him in fresh waves.

“Is it true Seelie magic always reveals the truth, my Lady?”

The Queen looks up to him. In her current form, he is so tall above her. “It is indeed. Is there a truth you seek, Jonathan?”

He looks away too quickly. A tremble of the lip, a flutter of the eyelids. It is rather like hunting fish in a pond. “Nothing worth imposing for, my Lady.”

She sits him down by a quiet creek, admiring how his longs fold under him like a little foal’s. “No imposition. How about we play a game. You tell me your favorite flower, and I answer you a truth.”

Jonathan is clever enough to recognize a trap, and hesitates for a long while, but he is too young and naïve to know truth could itself be a danger, and a mortal one. “Very well, my Lady. You have my thanks.” He thinks a moment more. “My favorite flower is the one with the thorns. The red ones.”

The Queen smiles, charmed by such naïveté. “The rose, you mean?” She conjures one to her hand, and Jonathan stares at it in wonderment. She puts it in his hand, and his slender, pale fingers curl around it carefully. Is this the first he’s seen of downworlder magic? So strange, considering he is more downworlder than Nephilim with Lilith’s blood.

“Now, for your truth.” She gives him a genteel smile. “What truth do you seek, Jonathan?”

He hesitates, and the Queen cannot help herself from leaning forward slightly in anticipation, as if to snatch up his breath on her very cheeks. Then, haltingly, he says, “Does my father love me?”

Oh, the poor little fool. She would almost pity him if he weren’t so delicious. He bites his lip and the Queen asks, “What sort of love do you mean?”

For a moment she expects him to deny it, insist he has only filial intentions, act outraged she would suggest otherwise. But he is not such a snotty little mortal. Instead, he says, “Everything.”

The Queen pats his knee and he looks down again, fingers fidgeting where he thinks she can’t see. “The trick is simple, then. Kiss him, and you shall know.”

“Kiss him?” Jonathan’s nose wrinkles. “What kind of spell is that? My lady,” he adds, with adorable haste.

The Queen smiles widely. “A kiss is one of the most powerful forms of magic,” she says, in the authoritative way she knows will bring him to heel. Valentine has been all too unsubtle with this one—his obedience is too absolute. When Valentine commanded _love me,_ he did not think to specify what forms that love should take. “A kiss, properly formed, can bring empires to an end.”

Jonathan looks skeptical, but does not say so outright. “I trust your wisdom, my Lady.”

She takes his hand, the one without the rose. His hand is warm, like a little human’s. “Then show me. I must see whether you cast the spell correctly.”

Jonathan looks as if he might refuse. Then, with a deep breath, he dips in and pushes his lips all too briefly to the Queen’s cheek. When he draws back—as if scalded—his cheeks are very flushed and he looks so deliciously pretty and ashamed.

The Queen gives a silvery laugh and Jonathan’s flush deepens. “Oh, not like that,” she says, and pats his knee again. “That was not a kiss. That was a little peck from a bird.”

Jonathan’s face turns downwards and she lifts it up with a finger underside his chin. “Don’t fret,” she says. “Try again, but kiss me as you would your father.”

Jonathan’s mouth is so close to hers she can feel his sweet, mortal breath flutter against her cheek. The fearful uncertainty in his dark, inhuman eyes is even sweeter. Then he presses his pretty, curved lips to hers, soft as a moth’s wings.

A first kiss is a rare pleasure, a pleasure that the Queen has had many times. Still, there is something dark to Jonathan’s, like the honey of a dying hive. She knows he is not like any mortal, nor any Nephilim—angel’s and demon’s blood is in his veins. He is more faerie than shadowhunter or human, and it thrills her to her dark heart that Valentine Morgenstern, of all men, was gifted with such a son.

“Much better,” she tells him, when his dark eyes turn to her shyly for approval. “Do you see the magic a kiss weaves, now?”

Jonathan nods, a feverish flush still on his high cheekbones. Part of her wishes to keep him as a little pet—he did open his mouth, after all—but she knows his father would burn down the whole Court in retaliation, if he could. “Thank you, my Lady.”

“No need for thanks. I enjoyed our little game.” She lifts herself, and lets Jonathan help her courteously to her feet. “Should you ever want to play again, simply break the stem of the rose I gave you. It shall never wither nor fade.”

Valentine Morgenstern is pacing under the watchful eye of her knight Meliorn when they return, his brow furrowed. He, too, was once handsome like his child, but has grown too hardened, too stubborn, too set in his ways. Jonathan, in contrast, is malleable and supple as wet clay.

Valentine embraces his son when he is returned to him, Jonathan shy and grateful in his arms. “Is that all, my Lady?” he asks, and the question is lined with threat.

“That is all,” the Queen says, and she does not hide her smile. “Until we meet again, Valentine Morgenstern.”

 

 

Jonathan sits next to Valentine on the couch, his dark eyes intent on the seraph blade in Valentine’s hands as Valentine instructs him how to remove a particularly deep gouge in the _adamas_ put there by a vampire’s tooth. He has a single question, which Valentine answers, then puts the blade in Jonathan’s hands to carry out the repairs. He obeys, carrying out the work quickly and skillfully, as if he’d done it a hundred times previously.

Valentine is proud, of course. Jonathan Morgenstern far outstrips Jonathan Herondale in tests like these—he doesn’t question, doesn’t wonder why. He is all focus and ruthlessness and obedience, and while Valentine knows he is capable of brilliance and innovation, he cannot help but also favor Jonathan Herondale’s desire to understand, to learn.

It was an old shadowhunter tradition to set out weapons and books and other such things for a child to see which one they would pick, and thus, as old wives’ tales went, what they would value in life. Jonathan Morgenstern, four or five at the time, surrounded by crossbows and greataxes and books of runes and blades of every description and use, immediately chose _Phaesphoros,_ morning-bringer—Valentine’s own weapon—as if the power and heritage of the blade drew him in.

Valentine had been proud, of course. Though it was meaningless, Jonathan Morgenstern’s perfect choice fit in with all his other excellent traits—his pride in their family, his Nephilim heritage, his prowess in battle. He killed his first wolf not long after, and brought his father the pelt.

Jonathan Herondale, on the other hand, had deliberated longer. He’d inspected each item in turn, touching them with chubby child’s hands, a frown in his intense blue eyes. His distress grew as he agonized over the blades. Then, to Valentine’s complete surprise, he’d fled the circle of items entirely and thrown his arms around his father’s shoulders.

“ _I choose you,_ ” he’d said in a child’s voice, and buried his face in Valentine’s chest. Though Valentine had not cried in many, many years, it had brought tears to his eyes.

As if sensing his thoughts, Jonathan Morgenstern shifts beside him, something like worry in his dark eyes. Valentine wonders if he can sense his distraction, sniff out the presence of the other Jonathan like a rat to a foe.

“Father,” Jonathan says, and his voice is hesitant, and uncharacteristically soft. Jonathan Morgenstern never hesitates—it is not in his nature. He may pause, deliberate, but he will always hurl himself headlong into any challenge. “Do...do you love me?”

The question is unexpected, and a bit startling. Valentine rarely visits anything upon Jonathan Morgenstern other than praise or correction—so closely does he follow Valentine’s teachings, punishment is moderate and only to correct for...overzealousness. Jonathan Morgenstern is aware of his excellence, too, and takes great pride in it, as any warrior of his caliber should.

“Of course,” he says, and puts a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. Physical contact is rare between them, but he wants to assuage Jonathan’s doubts. His bones feel brittle under Valentine’s hand, but he knows they are anything but. He inherited Jocelyn’s slender build and her delicate features, but he has the power of the strongest adult men. “You are everything I could have dreamed you to be.”

This does not ease the torment in Jonathan’s dark eyes, and Valentine’s worry that he has learned of the other Jonathan deepens. Then, in a hesitant motion Jonathan Morgenstern leans in and presses lips to his father’s with fretful passion.

Revulsion empties Valentine’s lungs like a vacuum and as he shoves Jonathan away, sending the boy tumbling to the floor. Jonathan’s face crumbles, and Valentine surges to his feet, taking a step back. Something icy like an edge of steel has settled in his chest, something closer to fear than he’d felt in years. “What—Jonathan—why would you—“  
  
The words don’t come. Jonathan’s entire aspect quivers as if in agony, and he curls in on himself slightly as he says, in a small voice, “I love you.”

“No.” Valentine’s voice is unsteady to his own ears. Nausea tugs at his gut with a physical force. “No, that’s—Jonathan.”

His voice breaks on his son’s name and he backs away, heart speeding as if a vampire or wolf had cornered him in his own home. He rounds the table and makes slowly for the stairs, just to get away from the boy, the _thing_ lying on the floor. It looks up at him with sick, pleading eyes, and Valentine’s stomach turns and he feels as if he’s being swallowed up.

He stumbles up the stairs, his blood pounding with _wrong wrong wrong_ and the taste in his mouth like bile or acid, and he knows what must be done.

 

 

Jonathan had never cried before, not because he had never felt pain, but because he had never seen a need or use for tears. Why cry when you could bleed, or feed on the pain until you’d become a stronger monster than it?

Now, bleeding and broken-hearted, Jonathan did cry. He wept, then wailed, then screamed into his thin blankets, not caring who would hear. His father, who did not love him, did not intervene nor punish him for his noisemaking.

And so Jonathan felt pain, and then fear, because after what could have been hours or days he did not heal. Jonathan always healed fast, and his father praised him for it, and he felt something like pride as he watched the pale lips of his skin seal shut as if keeping his secrets. But when he finally managed to drag himself to the piece of glass that served as a mirror, he was horrified to discover that the whip stripes on his back had only congealed into a mass of dark blood, the wounds ragged and open. It wasn’t possible. Nothing could hurt him like that, and even if it could, his father would never use it on him. Not like this.

Jonathan cried out for his father, but no one came. It was only when he staggered down to the kitchen table and found a stack of large Euro bills and no note promising his father’s return that he realized he was alone.

Then the panic set in. Jonathan could survive without his father, but he loved his father, and all the shaky _iratzes_ he drew on his skin did nothing to heal his wounds, as if he’d used a pen instead of a stele.

It took him nearly a week to muster the strength to leave the apartment, and by then he was dangerously faint with hunger. Gingerly, painfully, he eased his father’s coat over his shoulders, covering the blood and his torn shirt, and stuffed the money in the coat pocket.

The walk to the store was torture, but Jonathan had been trained to withstand that, so he did. He grabbed the nearest items in his arms and brought them to the clerk, leaning over the counter to keep from slipping to the floor. The woman at the register asked him if he was ill, and asked where his parents were. Her concern seared like the rasp of his coat over his wounds, and there must have been something in his face or eyes that showed because the color and expression drained from her face.

A few days later Jonathan had not improved, and he had run out of food. He had become feverish, weak and chilled or too hot at intervals, and the pain was so severe it made him cry out at times. His father did not return, and Jonathan could tell he was dying. It was a peculiar feeling, as he was not dying very quickly, but his instincts told him of the danger. With titanic effort he managed to move the apartment to London, the home he remembered best, and stagger out onto the street before collapsing completely.

He woke in the hospital—or at least, he assumed it was a hospital. He had never been—he was not a mundane. But, he thought bitterly, he was now healing like one.

The mundanes asked him his name, for a number he knew nothing of, how he’d been hurt, but he pretended to speak Croatian and no English, and eventually they desisted. He knew they would find a translator eventually, but it gave him time. They took his blood—he thought wryly that could serve as a shock to their little mundane minds—and gave him pills for the pain, which he docilely took and spit out into his hand once they’d gone. There were stitches, which Jonathan thought barbaric but bore in sullen silence. They brought him food, and changed his bandages, and told him he was brave and strong for not crying. One of the nurses, who was older, held his hand and named him Daniel, who had escaped death.

When they brought in a translator and a woman who said she was with the police, Jonathan told them in flawless Croatian that his name was Andełko, and that he had been attacked by two men whose faces he did not see. When asked if he had family, he said they were dead. When they asked how he came to England and whether he had a job and other questions that bored him, he curled in on himself and began to cry. At first they tried to quiet him, but when he started to give hard, wracking sobs that made his whole body shake and the stitches in his back rip and bleed, they left him alone.

After a few weeks, he was well enough to walk with only a limp, so he stole the pen from a nurse’s clipboard. It was a crude weapon but he managed, and left a mundane man’s body in a closet wearing the dead man’s clothes.

 

 

Jonathan Morgenstern is twenty when the Seelie Queen sees him next, and when he kneels to her and calls her _my Lady_ he asks her to call him Sebastian. He is no less beautiful than he was in his youth, still with the same delicate coloring and indecent lips and lashes, but his eyes are cold and fathomless. His kisses, she is quick to learn, are no longer innocent and shy, but hungry and darkly sweet.

“I still have it, you know,” he says, stretched out bare next to her with his head pillowed on her arm. “The rose you gave me.”

“You never called to play again,” she replies, and though she strokes his scarred shoulders, part of her has already called on her strongest magic should the conversation take an unpleasant turn.

He looks up at her, a lazy smile on his curved lips. “Tell me, my Lady. What is your favorite flower?”

She brushes her fingers on his cheek and he nuzzles slightly to the touch, and she thinks of if she had kept him as a boy. She decides fate and his father have made him even more merciless and delightfully hateful than she could have. “The Orchid,” she replies, and lets one bloom against his cheek. She touches his hair, and it is soft. “Or the Dandelion. One is beautiful, delicate, a harbinger of death. The other is resilient, insidious, placing itself everywhere at once, and yet flees on the wind at the slightest ill breeze.”

“Both suit you, my Lady,” he says, and he is genuine when he says it because it is the truth.

“Do you still love the rose?” She asks, looking up at the canopy of perfect, sharp-thorned roses above her bed. “Should I fear to prick myself on your beauty?”

Her jest is met with a drowsy smile, and lying there as if boneless he does look almost harmless. “Do they suit me?”

The Queen traces the yoke of his shoulders. “I should choose the myrrh tree, myself.”

The comment is cruel, but a true one. Sebastian does not know: he has not read the old stories, too occupied with blood, heaven and hell, revenge. The myrrh tree took its name from the youth Myrrha who loved her father too dearly in the carnal sense, and was banished from his kingdom for her impious trespass. She thought of sweet Jonathan with his tears of myrrh— _to hate a father is a crime, but love like yours is worse than hate._

“Would you ask a truth of me now, my Lady?”

The Queen gives him a sly smile. “You are not bound to truth as I am, my dearest one. Your answers, sweet as they may be, are fleeting as your mortal breath.”

His eyes are hard as stones gleaming in water. “I swear by the Angel to answer your one question truthfully.”

She is taken aback, even if she does not show it. Though surprised, she is prepared, and presses a kiss to his lips before asking, “What is it you fear most, dearest one?”

If he is surprised by her question, he does not show it. If anything, his black eyes seem to glitter with something like amusement. “To be alone,” he answers simply. “I once asked you if my father loved me. He did not, and I destroyed him. My brother and sister will love me in his place.”

For a moment, the Queen feels pity for him, more powerful than as she had when he was a boy. For now he is a man, and for all his suffering and deepest cruelties he still has not learned the truth that there was no love. That this truth might destroy him worries her greatly, as now they are allied as much as they are poised to betray.

“Every being is born and dies alone,” she reminds him, and traces the shape of shell of his ear. Even in the dim light, the marks on his back are visible, and she can feel the ghost of them under her fingertips. “Remember that, dearest one, or your fear shall rule you.”

He does not answer, as if he has not truly heard. She fears this is true, and for what may come to pass. Valentine’s children far surpass him in dangerousness, and the girl and the changeling boy are no exception.

“To fear such a fate would be foolish.” His smile is sweet, and entirely false. “For I have you, and you have me.”

She kisses him, and his lips part for her as they did on the bank of the little creek. She pulls him in close, and for a moment he tastes like he did as a boy, a lonely little demon-blooded Nephilim who wanted only his father’s love. Then the taste is gone, replaced with a bitter-sweetness that she drinks in like nectar.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title and quotations taken from Ovid’s telling of the story of Myrrha and Cinyras in the Metamorphoses—Myrrha loves her father and for that she is banished and the gods transform her into the myrrh tree, where she is doomed to forever weep for her love. (Before you roast me for this, remember Ovid would be proud).


End file.
